Chapter 23 Charlie
CHAPTER 23? CHARLIE
London, England
Charlie Jameson held tight to two hands, one on either side: Clara and Wynnie. Wynnie had refused to be carried, saying it would slow them down. The threesome moved slowly toward St. James’s Square. Charlie felt a fraud, an actor in a bad movie, trying to portray bravado and knowledge. His heart hammered. He’d promised to get them out of London, but he had no idea if he could do so.
Charlie understood weather systems. Everyone in London had a good chin-wag now and again about the moodiness and dampness of winter. But that day, unbeknownst to Charlie and most of London, the warm, wet air from the Gulf Stream swirled toward and then hovered over London, captured by the many fingers of the city’s buildings and homes.
The mist joined the coal smoke in the air in an alchemic brew, creating a green and brown glow. Light seeped through the fog, shafts of it struggling to find a way through. The eerie greenish fog flowed through the streets, fluttered over the River Thames, and then settled in for a good long stay.
“An anticyclone,” the BBC declared on the morning wireless between the news of Mr. Churchill being booed by the socialist opposition and Her Majesty giving a dinner party for the ministers at Buckingham.
But no one, including Charlie Jameson, believed the fog would stay for long, or that it would gather forces to create a deadly viscous murk, like they were inside a bottle of spoiled milk. They could see maybe three feet ahead at most. Londoners, including Charlie, believed that this was just another foggy day, another misty, moist December. Get on with it, chap. They’d borne up under such times before and they’d bear up under them again, because this was what it meant to be Londoners, a people who’d survived much worse than hazy skies.
The war was only over six years gone, and bombed-out spaces were still scattered about the city, gaping reminders of what was not quite past. Move past it was the cry of the government and the people. But the economy still suffered, patrons arriving at the bank begging for one more month’s grace before they repaid their loan, aghast at their empty coffers.
What was a bit of fog to them?
Now only the light of the fiery torches penetrated the fog. The headlights of cars, the sirens on ambulances, and flashlights were swallowed and strangled by the sulfur.
Charlie used hedgerows and iron fences to guide them and then cut through alleys he knew by heart. The sun hung listless and useless, defeated. An ambulance blared its siren and strobed its lights while being slowly guided by a torch along Charles II Street.
This catastrophe was his responsibility. He’d brought this woman and child here. He could have taken the papers to her in America, couldn’t he have? If he’d known, if he’d only known. He felt a guilty twist in his gut. He wanted to care for her, protect her and her child.
Charlie had told Clara he could find his way home with his eyes shut tight, but ensconced in fog, he wasn’t sure he could find his way a single block.
“I can’t even see my feet,” Clara said, her voice muffled beneath her scarf.
“Are we lost?” Wynnie asked with a cough, and his heart squeezed in panic.
“No,” Charlie said. “Another few blocks. That’s all.”
Running feet, sirens, an oily sensation in the air, grime in his ears and eyes. His beautiful city crippled by smoke and soot. Two American guests now his responsibility.
“Keep going,” he said. “Keep moving. Hold on to me.”
The world was blotted out. His eyes ached and the fog seemed to be doing nothing but gaining power, rolling in and around itself like a great storm at sea. Hulking forms of cars were abandoned on the side of the road; twice they heard the sickening crunch of metal on metal, the outlines of everything smudged with an eraser.
They moved slowly, quietly, shuffling more than walking until he told them, “We’re here.”
He fished into his pocket and drew out his key, held its familiar edges through his gloved hand. He inserted the brass and the tumblers fell away. He turned the egg-shaped knob, opened the door, and the three of them stumbled into the house, nearly falling into the entryway, the specter of fog following.
He slammed the door shut and took Clara and Wynnie into his arms. They were so fragile. Clara’s head at his shoulder, Wynnie’s at his waist, all of them knitted together by fear and then safety.
“We’re here. We’re okay,” he said. “We’ll get out of here. I promise. The car…”
Wynnie pulled away first, and in the chandelier’s sparkling light, he saw her face was smudged with soot and her eyes were wide behind her glasses, which were smeared in a gray grime. He reached down and took off her glasses and tried to wipe them clean with a handkerchief from his pocket, but he only made it worse. She pulled down the scarf she’d been using to cover her mouth and nose.
“I’ve had bad dreams like that,” Wynnie said. “I felt like I’d fallen into one of my bad dreams.”
“It was terrible,” Charlie agreed. “That’s true. But here we are. Safe. I will have Moira make us something warm to eat, and then we’ll head to the country.”
That was when he looked at Clara, her face resolute with determination, holding back whatever fear must be quivering inside her. She placed her hand on top of Wynnie’s head.
They all heard the music: Vivaldi at full volume from a room down the hall.
“Who is here?” Clara asked.
Charlie didn’t answer her because he didn’t yet know. Were Archie and his wife, Adelaide, in the house?
The three of them walked through the marble foyer under the crystal chandelier, down the wood-paneled hallway of ancestors, and then to the right, where Callum’s library door was shut, as it almost always had been.
They raised their eyebrows at each other.
Even if Charlie had left the phonograph playing, which he surely hadn’t, it would have run its course by now. The needle would be turning on the inside edge of the record: swish swish swish.
Charlie pushed the door open.
It took him a moment to absorb the scene, so unexpected, his mind couldn’t catch up fast enough.
Moira, he realized with an electric shock.
It was Moira, and she was oblivious to the open door. A fire burned and crackled in the hearth. Orchestra music filled the room. And there was Moira in her dark dress without the white apron, and she was dancing with her eyes closed, tears pouring down her face. She appeared serene, gently swaying, twirling, her hands lifted in surrender. Then the music shifted, the crescendo winding down. She stopped and pressed her hands to her heart, swayed.
Charlie walked to the phonograph and lifted the needle, the room suddenly going silent. “Moira?” Charlie said her name softly, and she stopped, hesitated, and then opened her eyes to see the threesome, grimy and cold, wrapped in soot and wool.
“Oh!” She let out a pained cry and covered her face with her hands as if this could make her disappear. “Sir, I am so sorry. I thought…” With her eyes covered, she ran, bumping first into the desk, then into the standing brass lamp, and then into Charlie. He steadied her gently.
“Are you all right?”
She dropped her hands, opening first one eye and then the other. She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze. “Sir, I am not all right. I might die of embarrassment right here. I might just wither on the floor and never recover.”
He shook her lightly. “Look at me.”
The tears in her eyes overflowed, small trails on her cheek that she didn’t wipe away. “I thought you were gone for the day. I didn’t know you were returning. You said…”
She took two steps back and slumped into a leather lounge chair, bent over, and put her elbows on her knees, her head down as if she might be sick.
He leaned forward to listen carefully as she spoke softly. “I am mortified beyond understanding.” Then she seemed to pull the threads of herself together, exhaling and sitting up straight, pulling her shoulders back. “Let me explain. I miss your father something grand, sir. He was good to me. Better than my own father ever was. I miss him so much. I thought if I spent some time in the place he loved more than any other, I might be able to say goodbye to him. He loved your mother something wonderful and taught me things. He let me borrow books from this library. He treated me like a real person.”
“Yes, that was his way. I miss him, too.” Charlie eased the words into the room, hoping to calm her. She seemed to be hiding something, but he wouldn’t push the poor girl anymore. She was distraught. “We need to find something warm to eat and then leave quickly for the north. We must get Wynnie out of the city.”
Moira jumped up as if electrocuted. “Let me help.”
He nodded and then turned back to Clara and Wynnie, who looked as if they’d fallen into a weird dream and didn’t know how to wake up. “Upstairs on the top left is a guest room with a bath and fresh towels. Go clean up and I’ll quickly pack. We’ll leave in thirty minutes’ time.”
He walked out of his father’s library, past the weeping Moira with her mysterious grief, past the woman and her daughter who needed protection.
“Can I ask you something?” Charlie heard Clara’s voice and he stopped and turned.
“Of course, what is it?”
He noticed that she wasn’t speaking to him; she was standing in front of Moira.
Moira nodded.
“Did you know anything about this leather satchel of papers that Mr. Jameson had in this library? A woman, maybe? Someone who helped him?” Clara asked.
Moira glanced around the room. “No, nothing.”
Clara shot him a look and he smiled sadly. This woman so desperately wanted to know about her mother. What a pair he and Clara made—both needing to know about why his father owned these papers. Possibly that was why he felt he needed to pull her into his arms and hold her there until this was solved.
Clara took her daughter’s hand. “Come now, let’s go clean up.”
Moira led Clara and Wynnie to the guest room, and Charlie stood alone in the library, his head dizzy with the unexpected sight of Moira dancing alone in his father’s library.
He shut the door and rushed up the stairs to pack his own bag with the little he kept here. Leaving was imperative; the mysteries must wait.